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Greetings all. My name is Eric. i currently own a 2003 X5 3.0 Sport with a 5 speed manual transmission. having only recently learned the advantages to forums i figured i would start out by asking those of you for your honest opinions on what i should do with my suv at this time.

to give you some background i love my truck more than anything and to own a BMW SUV with a manual transmission is such a rarity that parting ways with it seems to be such a difficult task. the truck was originally my fathers and then handed off to me. however i seem to be having one problem after another. to make a long story short the car runs fine but it needs many replacements to pass inspection as well as some other things (sensors, new cats, shocks, and the list goes on) after taking it to the dealer (not a fan of) they estimated that to get the car to complete driving condition would cost me around 8 grand. clearly this is money that i do not have so i spent the last year driving the car anyway until i recently leased a new car but still kept the BMW since no one wanted to give me anything for a trade in. the car currently has over 180K miles but somehow still manages to get me from point A to B without any difficulty.

That being said now is the time for me to make a huge decision and where i would like some honest opinions. Do to the fact that manual transmission X5's are no longer even made do you think its worth it to hold on to the truck till i find the time and money to get it to tip top shape, or do you think its better to cut my loses now and sell the car depending on what i can get for it?

having been a member of various forums (lately) for the X5 - i have found out - alot of X5 Owners are DIYers -meaning that they are handy with tools
and do alot of repairs themselves - I am not myself so i share the same concerns as you do in regard to repairs and it being worth it

my X has 166K on it - and so far i have no issues - but it is OLD and they do need upkeep which costs $$$$

so i would suggest to either learn to DIY as much as you can do and find a good indy (independant repair man)

going to the dealer is the LAST thing i would do as everything with them is like triple the cost -so their $8K suggestion may only be about $3-4K at an indy

lookinto the things that need to get done and get familiar with folks on these forums (Xoutpost.com is great also) as they are very helpful and often will

suggest helping you out with their time and helping you repair something - real nice bunch of people on both these forums - with lotsa info to share as well!!

Best of luck and i hope you decide to keep your X5 as they are alot of fun to drive and nice looking too